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Your Twitter Profile

I’m not huge on Twitter. I don’t want to be huge on Twitter. (I like to actually read what the people I follow are saying. Huge is prohibitive to reading.) As of today, I am following 355 people. There are 447 people following me. I’ve posted 1853 tweets. So we agree, I’m not huge.

That does not stop me from having opinions. Especially opinions about those 92 people who are following me that I chose not to following back.

When I get one of those lovely emails saying that someone new is following me, here’s what I do. I look at your profile for these things:

Do you give a real name?

Do you give a real location?

Do you give a link in plain text (not a shortened URL) that I can scan before clicking?

What are your recent tweets about? Is there anything of substance or interest to me? (My interests are mainly web topics, technology, education, writing, news, green living and people I know in real life.)

Do your recent tweets show a willingness to share good links? Do they show a sense of either intelligence or humor or both?

Are the number of people you follow and the number of your followers somewhat proportionate? If you are following 12,538 people and 41 people are following you, something is amiss and you are not using Twitter for a purpose that interests me.

In the Twitterverse, even one out of six is enough for me to follow if that particular 1/6 is really interesting. But more is better. More looks transparent, professional, and honest.

My personal likes and dislikes are not really that important. However, I’m not the only person who looks at a Twitter profile with these questions in mind. Turn my questions into advice on how to make a Twitter profile that will attract followers. Make a better profile and you’ll have more success with Twitter.